At that time, in imperial Rome in the 3rd century, the trans concept did not exist, nor gender identity, nor the LGBTIQA movement (for which at this rate there will soon not be enough letters of the alphabet). Nobody defined themselves as non-binary, promoting inclusion and sexual diversity was not an imperative of political correctness, and there was certainly no Ministry of Equality (with or without Irene Montero), in which case perhaps another rooster would have crowed.
This comes to mind that a small museum in the town of Hitchin, in the county of North Hertfordshire, has become world famous for declaring the Emperor Elagabalus transsexual, of whom it has a denarius (silver coin) in its collection, and announcing There is great fanfare that from today he is going to refer to him as she, and to use female pronouns.
Until now Elagabalus – described by some historians as the worst emperor Rome ever had – was famous for his incompetence, eccentricity, extravagance, cruelty and decadence. He served his guests such bizarre “delicacies” as camel heels, flamingo brains and dromedary hooves, subjecting them to nutritional tests typical of The Jungle of the Famous, but without prizes. Worse still, he literally drowned his diners with a barrage of rose petals, and on another occasion he made them sit on cushions that were slowly losing air and emitting a noise similar to flatulence.
Apart from that, he was married five times (once to a male slave and once to a vestal virgin, which was forbidden), he defied all religious conventions of the time and place, he liked to prostitute himself disguised as a woman, he had a suit specially designed for him. prostatic vagina, removed the god Jupiter (anathema in Roman society) from circulation and confronted the Senate. He played with fire and only lasted four years.
Sextus Varius Avitus Bassianus came to the throne as Marcus Antoninus Antoninus after the death of his cousin Caracalla, at the age of fourteen, thanks to the intrigues of his grandmother, Julia Maesa. But he was not Roman but Syrian from Homs (although close to the Severan dynasty), and had served as High Priest of the god Elagabalus (hence why after his death he began to be called that). His ethnic origin and his sexual scandals would not have gone unnoticed today, and even less so by parties that put emphasis on the Christian family, faith and the flag.
Nor in Rome, where even his own grandmother got tired of so many excesses and commissioned the Praetorian Guard to get him out of the way. He had created too many enemies and his murder when he was an 18-year-old teenager did not surprise almost anyone, and he was succeeded in March 222 by his cousin Severus Alexander, much more discreet by the way. He had passed several towns.
But what if it was all a campaign orchestrated by his rivals to bring about his downfall, exploiting racial prejudices due to the fact that he was Syrian, and the repulsion that his Eastern beliefs and customs inspired in Roman senators and aristocrats? After all, the accounts of his extravagances were written retrospectively by the victors (in this case chroniclers like Cassius Dion and others in the pay of Severus Alexander), and European and North American classical historians wonder if they would not have been magnified for specific purposes. politicians. Many leaders have peculiar habits. It is also said about Javier Milei that he talks to Conan, his dead dog, through a medium, and there it is…
“Do not call me by the name that has a masculine ending, but by the one that has a feminine ending,” the chroniclers attribute to Elagabalus. And based on this, and the fact that he sometimes referred to himself as “lady” and as “the wife” of the slave he married, the Hitchin museum – after consulting with the LGBTIQA branch of the unions and groups dedicated to The defense of trans rights has chosen to treat him as a transgender man who became a woman, applying the pronouns and adjectives “that he would have used if he had lived in 21st century Great Britain instead of in Rome.”
The Romans were quite liberated, but when the establishment wanted to liquidate someone, they did not hesitate to denounce their “sexual transgressions.” Heliogabalus was no luminary and had gone down in history for his cruelty and stupidity. Until an English museum has turned him into a trans and gender equality icon.
